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Rob Ford’s ethnic slurs under the microscope: Who still talks like that?

Typically, those words suggests a lack of education or experience with people who are different, linguist says.

“Nobody sticks up for people like I do, every f---ing k---, n-----, f---ing w--, d---, whatever the race. Nobody does," Rob Ford was recorded saying in March. (Andrew Francis Wallace / Toronto Star January 2014 photo)

Toronto city council candidate Andray Domise wrote provocative open letter to black voters in July that asks why they still support Rob Ford after his racial slurs. (Chris So / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Rob Ford’s use of ethnic slurs emerged again as an issue in the mayoral campaign this week when Doug Ford responded to allegations of anti-Semitism related to his brother’s use of the word ‘k---’ by listing Jewish people he knows.

But who still talks like that?

“When you use k---, you’re evoking the Nazis and the Russian gangs and the people who wouldn’t give jobs to Jews … And what you think, and what your attitudes are, and whether you have Jewish friends and you’re really not very anti-Semitic, it doesn’t mean s---. It really doesn’t,” said Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“When you use a word like this, you are speaking in the voice of everybody who has ever used that word. You don’t speak for yourself. Think of a child who uses that word – it still stings, even if a child has no knowledge of what it means and no particular racial attitudes,” said Nunberg, whose research includes obscenities and racial slurs.

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He recently testified before the U.S. Trademark Office on behalf of native Americans seeking to have trademark protection withdrawn for the Washington Redskins name.

The use of the most common racial slurs in English language literature began to decline around the beginning of the 20th century. A strong decline in their usage in public conversation followed, although Nunberg’s research shows continued, frequent use of many of the most offensive racial slurs.

Slurs are still often used in private conversation — particularly among children growing up in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods like those common to Toronto, Nunberg said.

“But that obviously doesn’t legitimize their use later on, particularly in a semi-public context,” he said.

When used to reference other groups of people, the words are intended less to offend than to establish a sense of solidarity or belonging among a group, he argued.

“Their interest is really not in offending people with that word, but rather with bonding with other people like them in their common dislike for these other people,” Nunberg suggested.

The incidence in written English of some of the most common ethnic slurs, according to Google’s Ngram database. (Google Ngrams)

Where the sting of some other slurs for Jews may have faded as they fell out of common usage and began to sound quaint, ‘k---’ remains an “arch-slur” comparable to ‘n-----,’ Nunberg said.

“Nobody sticks up for people like I do, every f---ing k---, n-----, f---ing w--, d---, whatever the race. Nobody does. I’m the most racist guy around,” Ford said in a recorded conversation that the Star reported in May.

The word ‘n-----’ is rooted in a Southern American pronunciation of negro but has “all kinds of symbolic power that the word negro itself doesn’t have,” said University of Toronto linguist Jack Chambers, whose studies include the formation of dialects.

“N-----,” American poet Langston Hughes wrote, “sums up for us who are coloured all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America.”

“If you grow up ignorant of some kind of cultural norm you’re probably allowed to violate it once or twice until you learn better — but that’s not what’s going on here,” Chambers said.

Typically, those words suggests a lack of education or experience with people who don’t look the same as the person using them, he said.

“The people who harbour the most obvious racist attitudes are the people who are insulated – the people who never take the College St. streetcar,” Chambers said.

People from a particular ethnic background can make a case for re-appropriating slurs, as many black hip hop artists have done, he said.

“But for a white guy to call an African Canadian a n-----, it’s hard to know when the context would be right for that,” he added.

“To me, it’s interesting that it’s not more of a big deal,” Nunberg said.

The word’s definition — a type of monkey, an obscure slur for African immigrants or a reference to the man’s Mohawk haircut — was not clear, nor was Allen’s intention in using it, but the senator was widely criticized and issued an apology.

“Any American politician who did that now, that would just be the end,” Nunberg said.

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